Individuality Without Isolation

Coworking In Action!

Nomads are not only universally beautiful and intelligent, but they are also always working on interesting and worthwhile projects. But Office Nomads (the business) tries to avoid advertising for any one project over another, so we don’t often shout about the amazing work our members are doing. However, in this case, we just have to stand up and cheer because Seth Stell and Peter Conerly have created a free tool that can benefit all of us. Their work is a perfect example of coworking in action!

PaletteComp is, very simply, a way to test a variety of color schemes for your website, without having to write a line of code. Most designers will provide you with one or two color schemes, but PaletteComp allows you to test out ANY color scheme you can come up with, and see it on different templates so you can really get a sense for how the colors will work together. The tool is available for free at www.palettecomp.com. Check it out!

But the real story here is not about PaletteComp. It is about how two members lived the coworking values of Collaboration, Community, Accessibility, Sustainability and Openness to create it.

Seth and Peter, a designer and a developer respectively, are both Residents at Office Nomads. One day they happened to sit next to each other. Seth’s client had just gotten back to him and said they didn’t like the colors he’d sent, but they couldn’t explain why.

Frustrated, Seth talked to Peter about it.

Peter, being a coder, and Seth being a conceptual guy, discussed the need for an easy way to try different color palettes on websites. Peter figured out how to code it to Seth’s design and needs, and after two months and a ton of whiteboarding, PaletteComp was born.

Seriously, LOTS of whiteboarding.

Seth had recently been turned down for a job at Micrsoft because they were unsure of his UI/design abilities. Now he can add this to his portfolio and Peter, who “had a lot of fun coding this” can show it off as well!

And they’re not the only Nomads who got something out of the project. Dana, a financial advisor, used it to figure out the color scheme for her new website.

What’s next for PaletteComp? Well, hopefully one of the color sites – like ColorLovers – will want it and take it over. Seth and Peter might add some features down the road but they have no plans of selling or marketing PaletteComp. They both have full plates of their own work to do and just wanted to create a tool to help non-designers make decisions on how their websites should look. And of course, now Seth has an easy way to mock up color schemes for his clients.

Here’s where we would usually say this is all thanks to coworking, but Seth really put it best: “We were able to produce this because there was no bureaucracy. The best thing about PaletteComp is that two people from different industries can identify a problem and solve it…fast. If we worked in a traditional office this never would have happened. We would have been in different departments and might have never even talked to each other.”